Here is the original assignment.

Have you ever gone out to see a new movie, but were surprised to find out that it was similar to one you had seen before? Many movies are created in the image of previous ones, as it is supremely difficult to generate novel ideas.

Released this past week was The Good Dinosaur, a film by Disney Pixar. The film had reminded me of movies I had watched when I was a kid, The Land Before Time.

These movies featured the adventures of kid-dinosaurs through scenarios of drought, migration and more. They were really fun to watch because the tones were lighthearted, although serious at times. The characters each had unique personalities, and each had developed to become a stronger character by the end of the movie.

In The Good Dinosaur, the protagonist (Arlo) reminded me a lot of the main character from The Land Before Time (Little Foot). Both characters are feeble brontosauruses who had a lot of developing to do. They are both swept away into adventure, and both end up protecting their loved ones in dramatic fashion.

Below is a mashup image of the two movies.

Process

1. Find 2 images online that you would like to combine into 1.
2. Open up an graphics-editor program such as Microsoft Paint.
3. Paste both images into the editor.
4. Re-size / align the images.
5. Save the newly composed image.

That’s it! Enjoy!

This Doesn’t Belong Here- 4 Stars

The prompt for this assignment is:

For this assignment you need to mash up two different iconic movie scenes. However, you should aim to be as subtle as possible. Perhaps a famous prop that simply doesn’t belong or a character that looks a little out of place.

The Work Itself

The Story Behind the Story

Have you found what is out of place yet? Okay I’ll tell you, I put Gatsby toasting to the T-Rex at the end of Jurassic Park.  I love the movie Jurassic Park (haven’t gotten around to reading the books and the second and third movies of the series are quite mediocre), and this final scene always gets me so pumped so naturally it pumped into my right away when I read the prompt. Another favorite movie (as well as the book) is The Great Gatsby, it is such a timeless and iconic movie, I absolutely love it. The scene that pops into my mind from the Great Gatsby is when he turns to toast Nick at the party, quite iconic in many ways. The contrast of the movies also made me want to combine them even more because I thought they would be quite funny together.

The T-Rex and Gatsby also have similar characteristics which I thought paired nicely with one another. They both end up being the unexpected outcome of the story. During The Great Gatsby, everyone roots for him to get the girl, Daisy, but by the end of the story, Gatsby proves to be a fraud but so does Daisy. By the end of the movie, no one wants the two to be together. Now in Jurassic Park, the T-Rex is killing people through most of the movie but by the end of it all, the T-Rex ends up saving everyone from the Velociraptor and comes out the hero of the movie.

Narrating the Process

This assignment was pretty simple and I accomplished it in the following steps:

1. Google images of the iconic scenes I want to use
2. Open each image into Photoshop Elements 11
3. Crop and copy Gatsby into the Jurassic Park scene using the “Quick Selection” tool
4. Adjust the size accordingly (Gatsby turned out to be quite large over the Jurassic Park scene)
5. Flatten the image together